TIRADE: Rev. Jesse Jackson talks Redskins, Reagan and racism

The Rev. Jesse Jackson gave a speech at Furman University in which he claimed that President Ronald Reagan supported segregating football along racial lines and the Washington Redskins name is intended to recall the slaughter of American Indians.

And he was just getting started.

Jackson, who is known for giving inflammatory speeches about race, was true to form in his appearance at the private liberal arts college in South Carolina this week.

Jackson insisted that Reagan and former Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater supported policies that would have kept college and national football teams segregated if they had gotten their way, according to Campus Reform.

“Michael Jordan couldn’t have gone to UNC… it would have been ineligible for him to play at UNC,” he said. “You couldn’t have had the Olympics in Atlanta Georgia. You couldn’t have had the Dallas Cowboys in Houston, Texas, you couldn’t have had the Super Bowl in New Orleans or in Atlanta or in Jacksonville or Miami.”

Jackson also weighed in on the Redskins controversy, unsurprisingly taking the view that the name deliberately evoked the gruesome slaughter of American Indians.

“How about pictures we see of Indians stabbing the cowboys,” he said. “In reality what happened was if If you killed an Indian… finally you got paid for the scalps of the red skins of the Indians…and that’s how we got the Washington Redskins football league.”

The Tea Party was also in Jackson’s cross-hairs. He said the political movement–which supports limited government and personal responsibility–has had explicitly racist goals since its inception.

Jackson was billed as an “international peacemaker,” before his speech.

A small group of student protesters, determined to get the word out on Jackson’s controversial history, passed out fliers before the event. University administrators confiscated their fliers and asked them to leave, though the students refused, according to National Review.